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I think the reality is more subtle than this. Is, for example, the discovery of DNA going to be falsified? I don't think so. Is the notion that living organisms

I think the reality is more subtle than this. Is, for example, the discovery of DNA going to be falsified? I don't think so. Is the notion that living organisms evolve going to be falsified? Again, I doubt it. The case of Newton and Einstein is relevant here. Einstein didn't "falsify" Newton but rather enriched our understanding of physics. A better model seems to be that scientific theories fit into a spectrum of certainty: a very few that are certain up to the highly speculative. That scientists need to be open-minded and maintain a level of skepticism is necessary, however, the extreme skepticism you appear to be suggesting is not warranted.

0thgen 7y ago
if scientific theories lie on a spectrum of certainty, then "prove" is at the maximum end of that spectrum the "extreme skepticism" you claim the OP has seems more like a cautionary statement about avoiding the extreme assumption that a scientific theory can be "proven" i think the OP is correct here; assuming evolutionary theory can be "proven" is a risky thing to say in a research article
vikramkr 7y ago
Dna could be falsified. It's incredibly low chance but it could. Just like the discovery of the bacteria that causes influenza was falsified once it became clear it's a virus. Just like the so called central dogma of DNA->RNA->protein turned out to be not so central or not so dogmatic. And Einstein definitely falsified Newton with the famous experiment with the eclipse and with more correctly showing Mercury's orbit, both of which contradicted fundamentally with Newton. Newton is an extraordinary breakthrough, and still useful as a model, but our understanding is no longer Newtonian. And, finding a way to enrich our understanding of physics even further means finding ways to falsify parts of einstein and quantum mechanics to provide the foundation for an even deeper understanding.
- tossAsimov 7y ago
  I think he's trying to make a point similar to the one made by Asimov: https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...
  - raverbashing 7y ago
    Completely agree. I think people are too hung up on the "falsifiability" term and don't look at the bigger picture As your link puts nicely: "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
    - vikramkr 7y ago
      We're not saying they're equally falsifiable though. We have p values and sigmas and statistics to deal with different levels of wrongness and likeliness of being wrong. Nobody's saying that DNA and a bacteria causing influenza are equally likely to be wrong or equally wrong or something. The problem is saying that dna's existence is not falsifiable. That is an incorrect statement. That's all that's being pointed out.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        When the likelihood of something starts to drop far below "universe spontaneously stops existing at the same time you're hit by lightning while checking your winning lottery ticket" levels, it might be valid to not treat it as a real option.
        vikramkr 7y ago
        And that's what we do in science - after 5 sigma in physics, it's discovered. But remember, an experimental error is a thing, measurement error is a thing. We've been caught on that before, and while something like "this thing exists" is not as likely to be overturned (though things we were very sure existed have been overturned as new instruments and tools became available), our understanding of what that thing does and how it interacts with other things leave room for compounding uncertainty. The great thing is, we have tools in statistics to put a number to that likelihood and allow people to make the subjective calls of what they're willing to treat as an axiom and move on regarding.
- msla 7y ago
  The existence of DNA will never be falsified. The experiments which discovered DNA happened. New experiments don't make old experiments un-happen. Similarly, the fact DNA->RNA->protein is how it works at least some of the time isn't going to become false.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    Those experiments could be wrong. They likely aren't and are like however many sigma accurate to the point that for all intents and purposes it's guaranteed to exist, but there's a reason that physisicts waited for 5 sigmabaccuracy before announcing the higgs for example. Other things people were really confident about existing because they thought they saw it, like a bacteria that causes influenza, with their own eyes, turned out to be false. you intellectually honest thing to say is that yes it is incredibly incredibly incredibly likely that DNA will not be falsified. But you can't say that with absolute certainty. it's not like in mathematics where you create the rules of the game and then can prove that within those rules you can accomplish XYZ which is a proof. We didn't write the rules of the universe.
    - msla 7y ago
      OK, let's explore this concept a bit more: Could a future experiment disprove the existence of Mount Everest?
      - anchpop 7y ago
        Sure, the existence of Mount Everest could be an international conspiracy for example. Or, you could be dreaming right now, and when you wake up you'll google "Mount Everest" and find no such thing exists
      - vikramkr 7y ago
        Yes. It could all be a conspiracy or some sort of insane natural illusion. Or a dream. Will a future experiment disprove it though? Of course not. But could one? Sure. There's an important distinction. Also, we could end up redefining what we mean by a mountain, or come to some scientific consensus that somehow redefines mount Everest as not a mountain or something. I know that's not in the spirit of the question you posted (Pluto may be declared to not be a planet, but nothing actually changed and it doesn't know we put it in a different bucket). The height could be redefined, etc. All that is super nitpicky and of course, I'm being a bit unreasonable in this response, there will not be any experiment that disproves its existence. But there still could. In the binary of is there any possibility however minuscule or not, the coin lands on the side of there is a possibility. The important point is falsifiability works as a tool here that actually helps continuously support the mountain's existence. If it was impossible to falsify and you could not conduct experiments where you would be able to evaluate whether or not the mountain is actually there, you'd have no way of being actually sure. One experiment is just looking at it. You could not see anything and falsify it, but because it's a testable hypothesis, you have run an experiment providing more evidence for its existence. It's why non-falsifiable statements are looked down on science. If it wasn't possible for a future experiment to disprove the existence of the mountain, many or all scientists would say it's either a meaningless question or a question of faith instead.
- prostheticvamp 7y ago
  > Dna could be falsified Cool! That’s an interesting idea. I could see particular attributes of DNA being corrected, but How would a molecular basis for inheritance be disproven? After all, we see the molecule on microscopy, we modify it, etc. A dis-proof would have to remain consistent with all of that. What would that look like?
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    I think "could" is different from "will" - dna's existence is so heavily demonstrated that the chance of somehow disproving is is basically nil. But, the fact that we could disprove it (we look at it and don't see it there) helps us confirm its existence - in general in science something has to be falsifiable to be able to be demonstrated to be likely to be true if that makes sense, otherwise there's no way to obtain more evidence. So it could be disproven, but will it? No. It definitely exists. But could it? Yep, that's how we know it exists in a scientific context. It's a bit counterintuitive, but it's the language of science. You see it in how physicists talk about discoveries - how many sigma they are. That's basically saying how likely it is the null hypothesis (sort of the falsification of the discovery) is true - and there's a point where it's so low (5 sigma traditionally) that it is considered "discovered." But that discovery is qualified with the chance that it's falsifiable. I don't know if that was a clear explanation - if not let me know so I can try clarifying. It was something that took me a while to wrap my head around - that it's only demonstrable if falsifiable, but it's a core part of a lot of scientific theory today
gnulinux 7y ago
From a purely theoretical point of view, there are things Newtonian physics and modern physics predict differently, particularly for very big or very small or very fast objects. So in that sense Einstein DID falsify Newton. What you're missing is Newtonian physics' subject was not very big or very small or very fast object so for the things scientists researched on, they predicted things quite well. But that only means they overfit to the universe around earth, and weren't able to model the universe in its entirety. Although you do have a good point, it's not true to say Einstein did not falsify Newton.
bregma 7y ago
The existence of DNA is an observation: it's data. That DNA is the means by which traits are passed between generations, now that's a theory. It's open to falsification. No matter how many examples you can provide showing the theory to be true, all I need to do is provide a single counterexample to prove it false.
- BaronSamedi 7y ago
  It's easy to take basic scientific discoveries for granted. The existence of DNA and micro-organisms, for example, or that living organisms change over time were important discoveries. It wasn't that long ago when people didn't know about them. These are the types of things I meant. The mechanism by which they work is, of course, far less certain.
piokoch 7y ago
There is a difference between discovery and theory. Discovery of Americas or Mars cannot be "falsified", they are scientific, objective, observable facts. Theory makes always some assumptions that can be invalid under some conditions - for instance Newtonian mechanics is not valid on quantum size scale or in case of huge masses or near speed of light velocities.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  The difference is that a "discovery" is the result of an experiment used to support a theory. The results of an experiment can't be falsified, just more experiments can provide better data.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I don't know - I think that at some level our discovery of Mars could be dis-proven if you think that Mars is a solid terrestrial planet then in all likelihood you are correct, but you may be wrong - Mars could be gaseous with a floating mantel and some very strange properties... That all said I'm happy to tell bible thumpers that evolution has been proven since they aren't approaching the question from a legitimate point of skepticism and trying their best to misinform others. For everyone who is earnest though - discoveries (even the earth being round) are only accepted until they're disproven, and there have been widely accepted theories that have been disproven in the past - like how relativity blew holes in Newtonian understandings.
baddox 7y ago
But you’re using precisely the mindset that you should be using. You doubt that DNA or evolution will be falsified. And, of course, Einstein’s theory absolutely did falsify Newton’s. I’m not aware of any epistemology or terminology within which you can claim that he didn’t.
- dlivingston 7y ago
  I like to think of scientific theories as having a certain "resolution", à la photos. Over time, our collective resolution over some domain increases. For example, Newton's Principia isn't wrong. Newton's gravity is just a lower-resolution photo than Einstein's; a first-order approximation to Einstein's second-order. And the day will come (or so Brian Greene et al. hope) when Einstein's general theory of relativity will be "falsified", and so on, because any human interpretation of reality is necessarily that: an interpretation. Theories just get more "granular" in the depth of their answers.
asjw 7y ago
The nucleus of the atom turned out to be made by other particles, it was believed to be atomic, but it wasn't In the same way in the future we might discover that what we know about DNA is wrong Or maybe not We'll never know for sure We only know that we approximated our knowledge of it at the best of our current understanding of it

0thgen 7y ago

if scientific theories lie on a spectrum of certainty, then "prove" is at the maximum end of that spectrum the "extreme skepticism" you claim the OP has seems more like a cautionary statement about avoiding the extreme assumption that a scientific theory can be "proven" i think the OP is correct here; assuming evolutionary theory can be "proven" is a risky thing to say in a research article

vikramkr 7y ago

Dna could be falsified. It's incredibly low chance but it could. Just like the discovery of the bacteria that causes influenza was falsified once it became clear it's a virus. Just like the so called central dogma of DNA->RNA->protein turned out to be not so central or not so dogmatic. And Einstein definitely falsified Newton with the famous experiment with the eclipse and with more correctly showing Mercury's orbit, both of which contradicted fundamentally with Newton. Newton is an extraordinary breakthrough, and still useful as a model, but our understanding is no longer Newtonian. And, finding a way to enrich our understanding of physics even further means finding ways to falsify parts of einstein and quantum mechanics to provide the foundation for an even deeper understanding.

tossAsimov 7y ago
I think he's trying to make a point similar to the one made by Asimov: https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Completely agree. I think people are too hung up on the "falsifiability" term and don't look at the bigger picture As your link puts nicely: "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    We're not saying they're equally falsifiable though. We have p values and sigmas and statistics to deal with different levels of wrongness and likeliness of being wrong. Nobody's saying that DNA and a bacteria causing influenza are equally likely to be wrong or equally wrong or something. The problem is saying that dna's existence is not falsifiable. That is an incorrect statement. That's all that's being pointed out.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      When the likelihood of something starts to drop far below "universe spontaneously stops existing at the same time you're hit by lightning while checking your winning lottery ticket" levels, it might be valid to not treat it as a real option.
      - vikramkr 7y ago
        And that's what we do in science - after 5 sigma in physics, it's discovered. But remember, an experimental error is a thing, measurement error is a thing. We've been caught on that before, and while something like "this thing exists" is not as likely to be overturned (though things we were very sure existed have been overturned as new instruments and tools became available), our understanding of what that thing does and how it interacts with other things leave room for compounding uncertainty. The great thing is, we have tools in statistics to put a number to that likelihood and allow people to make the subjective calls of what they're willing to treat as an axiom and move on regarding.
msla 7y ago
The existence of DNA will never be falsified. The experiments which discovered DNA happened. New experiments don't make old experiments un-happen. Similarly, the fact DNA->RNA->protein is how it works at least some of the time isn't going to become false.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  Those experiments could be wrong. They likely aren't and are like however many sigma accurate to the point that for all intents and purposes it's guaranteed to exist, but there's a reason that physisicts waited for 5 sigmabaccuracy before announcing the higgs for example. Other things people were really confident about existing because they thought they saw it, like a bacteria that causes influenza, with their own eyes, turned out to be false. you intellectually honest thing to say is that yes it is incredibly incredibly incredibly likely that DNA will not be falsified. But you can't say that with absolute certainty. it's not like in mathematics where you create the rules of the game and then can prove that within those rules you can accomplish XYZ which is a proof. We didn't write the rules of the universe.
  - msla 7y ago
    OK, let's explore this concept a bit more: Could a future experiment disprove the existence of Mount Everest?
    - anchpop 7y ago
      Sure, the existence of Mount Everest could be an international conspiracy for example. Or, you could be dreaming right now, and when you wake up you'll google "Mount Everest" and find no such thing exists
    - vikramkr 7y ago
      Yes. It could all be a conspiracy or some sort of insane natural illusion. Or a dream. Will a future experiment disprove it though? Of course not. But could one? Sure. There's an important distinction. Also, we could end up redefining what we mean by a mountain, or come to some scientific consensus that somehow redefines mount Everest as not a mountain or something. I know that's not in the spirit of the question you posted (Pluto may be declared to not be a planet, but nothing actually changed and it doesn't know we put it in a different bucket). The height could be redefined, etc. All that is super nitpicky and of course, I'm being a bit unreasonable in this response, there will not be any experiment that disproves its existence. But there still could. In the binary of is there any possibility however minuscule or not, the coin lands on the side of there is a possibility. The important point is falsifiability works as a tool here that actually helps continuously support the mountain's existence. If it was impossible to falsify and you could not conduct experiments where you would be able to evaluate whether or not the mountain is actually there, you'd have no way of being actually sure. One experiment is just looking at it. You could not see anything and falsify it, but because it's a testable hypothesis, you have run an experiment providing more evidence for its existence. It's why non-falsifiable statements are looked down on science. If it wasn't possible for a future experiment to disprove the existence of the mountain, many or all scientists would say it's either a meaningless question or a question of faith instead.
prostheticvamp 7y ago
> Dna could be falsified Cool! That’s an interesting idea. I could see particular attributes of DNA being corrected, but How would a molecular basis for inheritance be disproven? After all, we see the molecule on microscopy, we modify it, etc. A dis-proof would have to remain consistent with all of that. What would that look like?
- vikramkr 7y ago
  I think "could" is different from "will" - dna's existence is so heavily demonstrated that the chance of somehow disproving is is basically nil. But, the fact that we could disprove it (we look at it and don't see it there) helps us confirm its existence - in general in science something has to be falsifiable to be able to be demonstrated to be likely to be true if that makes sense, otherwise there's no way to obtain more evidence. So it could be disproven, but will it? No. It definitely exists. But could it? Yep, that's how we know it exists in a scientific context. It's a bit counterintuitive, but it's the language of science. You see it in how physicists talk about discoveries - how many sigma they are. That's basically saying how likely it is the null hypothesis (sort of the falsification of the discovery) is true - and there's a point where it's so low (5 sigma traditionally) that it is considered "discovered." But that discovery is qualified with the chance that it's falsifiable. I don't know if that was a clear explanation - if not let me know so I can try clarifying. It was something that took me a while to wrap my head around - that it's only demonstrable if falsifiable, but it's a core part of a lot of scientific theory today

gnulinux 7y ago

From a purely theoretical point of view, there are things Newtonian physics and modern physics predict differently, particularly for very big or very small or very fast objects. So in that sense Einstein DID falsify Newton. What you're missing is Newtonian physics' subject was not very big or very small or very fast object so for the things scientists researched on, they predicted things quite well. But that only means they overfit to the universe around earth, and weren't able to model the universe in its entirety. Although you do have a good point, it's not true to say Einstein did not falsify Newton.

bregma 7y ago

The existence of DNA is an observation: it's data. That DNA is the means by which traits are passed between generations, now that's a theory. It's open to falsification. No matter how many examples you can provide showing the theory to be true, all I need to do is provide a single counterexample to prove it false.

BaronSamedi 7y ago
It's easy to take basic scientific discoveries for granted. The existence of DNA and micro-organisms, for example, or that living organisms change over time were important discoveries. It wasn't that long ago when people didn't know about them. These are the types of things I meant. The mechanism by which they work is, of course, far less certain.

piokoch 7y ago

There is a difference between discovery and theory. Discovery of Americas or Mars cannot be "falsified", they are scientific, objective, observable facts. Theory makes always some assumptions that can be invalid under some conditions - for instance Newtonian mechanics is not valid on quantum size scale or in case of huge masses or near speed of light velocities.

boomboomsubban 7y ago
The difference is that a "discovery" is the result of an experiment used to support a theory. The results of an experiment can't be falsified, just more experiments can provide better data.
munk-a 7y ago
I don't know - I think that at some level our discovery of Mars could be dis-proven if you think that Mars is a solid terrestrial planet then in all likelihood you are correct, but you may be wrong - Mars could be gaseous with a floating mantel and some very strange properties... That all said I'm happy to tell bible thumpers that evolution has been proven since they aren't approaching the question from a legitimate point of skepticism and trying their best to misinform others. For everyone who is earnest though - discoveries (even the earth being round) are only accepted until they're disproven, and there have been widely accepted theories that have been disproven in the past - like how relativity blew holes in Newtonian understandings.

baddox 7y ago

But you’re using precisely the mindset that you should be using. You doubt that DNA or evolution will be falsified. And, of course, Einstein’s theory absolutely did falsify Newton’s. I’m not aware of any epistemology or terminology within which you can claim that he didn’t.

dlivingston 7y ago
I like to think of scientific theories as having a certain "resolution", à la photos. Over time, our collective resolution over some domain increases. For example, Newton's Principia isn't wrong. Newton's gravity is just a lower-resolution photo than Einstein's; a first-order approximation to Einstein's second-order. And the day will come (or so Brian Greene et al. hope) when Einstein's general theory of relativity will be "falsified", and so on, because any human interpretation of reality is necessarily that: an interpretation. Theories just get more "granular" in the depth of their answers.

asjw 7y ago

The nucleus of the atom turned out to be made by other particles, it was believed to be atomic, but it wasn't In the same way in the future we might discover that what we know about DNA is wrong Or maybe not We'll never know for sure We only know that we approximated our knowledge of it at the best of our current understanding of it